Hello.

I previously complained about a click-related bug on Start.com. I'm pleased to report that the Start.com team responded to my email, explaining they're overloaded but plan to fix the issue by replacing the "mouse down" event with a "mouse up" event. I'm happy with their response. Here are links to my previous posts about this issue.

I heard back from the Start.com team at MSN regarding the feedback I sent earlier. I'll share more details tomorrow, along with a couple of other posts I've been working on. Thanks to Venkat and Hadi for their responses.

I'm trying to be more diligent about documentation, but PDC distractions and the new MSN Search API have me sidetracked. The API's SOAP format and seeming redundancy with existing RSS search options make me question its value. Maybe I'll integrate it into AJAXTagger v2 if I can avoid feature creep. Check out my blog for MSN Search and Start.com developer program resources.

I'm still waiting for a response from Start.com regarding my UI improvement suggestion. Even though Robert Scoble mentioned their quick response to feedback, I haven't heard anything about my suggestion to improve the functionality of the close ("x") button on content panes. I've sent an email and even blogged about it, but no luck so far. Hopefully, they'll address it soon!

Microsoft's Start.com has launched a new developer API, possibly using the ATLAS framework (precursor to ASP.NET AJAX). It seems to focus on creating JavaScript-based "Gadgets," similar to RSS consumers, that need to be hosted on a server. The API also requires enabling cross-domain data sources in Internet Explorer, a topic I've discussed previously.

Start.com's AJAX web portal, which displays web feeds in an HTML interface, has been promoted to the main site. However, a persistent issue remains: the inability to cancel the close event on RSS feed panels, a problem previously highlighted and still unresolved.

I've been exploring how Microsoft's Start.com retrieves data from external web feeds. It appears they use a server-side script to tunnel requests to the remote server, effectively acting as a proxy. This workaround is necessary due to browser security restrictions that prevent cross-domain data fetching in Firefox and certain Internet Explorer configurations. Consequently, my AJAX application will need to handle the additional bandwidth required for retrieving data from Yahoo and Technorati directly, as redirecting XMLHttpRequest calls isn't a viable option.

I just completed all the questions on Start.com, and they gave me a link to their new beta site: http://www.start.com/myw3b/. It's supposed to be an all-in-one platform for RSS, search, info, and more. I'm really excited about this and the new Google services – they're making websites so much more interactive!